Memorial Day Hike

We spent Memorial day hiking the "R" Mountain just west of us. It's a dormant volcano and is fun not just to hike but to explore. We hiked up the butte and then walked all the way around the crater. It's not very pretty, but there were some Indian Paint Brush flowers along the trail. The colors were so amazing the boys wanted to take some pictures of them.


The Indian Paint Brushed were beautiful, but you don't hike the "R" Mountain for its beauty. And it wasn't the flowers that made Tyler say, "That was the coolest hike of my life!" or made the boys write about it in their journals minutes after they got home. No, it was the wildlife:

Jeremiah caught a lizard--which proceeded to run all over him before he finally got it off!

Then there was the scorpion. I didn't know we had scorpions in Idaho. It's tan colored with faint black stripes on the back. Look at the top of the picture--it's sitting on top of the sticks.

No hike would be complete without--the Rattlesnake!! We were surprised how loud the rattle was. He shook it a few times to warn us and then he crossed the trail and went up the rocks and we continued on our way. Fortunately he didn't catch us by surprise.

As if the rattlesnake, scorpion and lizard were not enough, as the boys were tearing down the mountain at the end of the hike they suddenly shrieked, "A diamondback!" and came running back up the mountain! Fortunately it was not a rattlesnake, but a gopher snake. It looks just like a diamondback but without the rattle and it's not poisonous. It was quite a bit bigger than the rattlesnake we saw though, so it definitely was regarded as "super cool". We didn't get a picture of it though. Darn.

A view of the volcano's crater.

Michael at the top of the butte overlooking the valley.

Another view of the crater.

The boys inside one of the many caves formed by the cooling lava.